Cardiology

Cardiovascular disease affects millions of people. At Stanford Health Care – ValleyCare, we are proud to offer a heart program that includes community outreach, noninvasive diagnostic testing, interventional cardiology, cardiac rehabilitation and open-heart and vascular surgery for treatment of coronary artery and valve disease.

The American Heart Association recommends that heart attack prevention begin by age 20. Understanding your risk factors is the first step. If you have risks, talk to your doctor about treatment and positive lifestyle changes.

Major risk factors you can change:

Smoking—the risk is two to four times greater in smokers

High cholesterol

High blood pressure

Physical inactivity

Obesity

Diabetes

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Cardiac Catheterization

Cardiac catheterization is used for diagnosis and treatment of blocked coronary arteries. A thin catheter is guided into an artery and then passed into the heart and coronary arteries. Dye, visible by x-ray, is injected through the catheter, which allows the cardiologist to detect where arteries are narrowed or blocked. If a significant blockage is found, balloon angioplasty and stent placement may be performed.

The Emergency Cardiac Team at ValleyCare consistently achieves some of the fastest "door-to-balloon" times in the nation for patients having an acute myocardial infarction, or heart attack. Door-to-balloon (or reperfusion) is the number of minutes from arrival at the Emergency Department until the opening of the coronary artery blockage in the Cardiac Cath Lab.

Device Implants

The ValleyCare Cardiac Catheterization Lab team implants the latest pacemakers, automatic implantable cardiac defibrillators (AICDs) and cardiac resynchronization therapy-defibrillator devices (CRT-Ds). These devices are indicated for patients at risk for sudden death due to lethal heart rhythms, and those who suffer from severe heart failure.

American College of Cardiology Platinum Performance Award

Stanford Health Care - ValleyCare is only one of 223 hospitals nationwide to receive the American College of Cardiology Foundation's NCDR ACTION Registry—Get With the Guidelines (GWTG) Platinum Performance Achievement Award for 2016. This award recognizes ValleyCare's commitment and success in implementing a higher standard of care for heart attack patients and signifies that ValleyCare has reached an aggressive goal of treating these patients to levels of care as outlined by the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association clinical guidelines and recommendations.

Contact Us

For referral to a ValleyCare cardiologist, call 800.719.9111 or use our online search for heart physicians.